Melissa Bender is an emerging photographer and freelance photojournalist with a medical background, focusing on issues surrounding race, racism, and inequality. She is a contributing photographer to Just Security, an online forum about U.S. national security law and policy. Her work was selected to appear in the post-election 2016 "#ICPWeThePeople" exhibit at the International Center of Photography and has been featured on social media by sites including Photograph Magazine, Flak Photo Network, the Women's March, Pantsuit Nation, the #girlgaze project, Female Collective, Muslim Women's Alliance, #STORYOFTHESTREET, War Within a Breath, and others.

Melissa holds an AB in Government from Harvard College, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and an MPH from the Harvard-Chan School of Public Health. In 2015, after a fifteen-year career in academic medicine, clinical practice, and medical education focused on topics at the intersection of health and poverty, Melissa turned to the study of photography as a means of social change at the International Center of Photography.